Author: holger

Some time in the fall of 2019 I decid­ed I need­ed stands for my new Klip­sch book­shelf speak­ers. After check­ing the options, I quick­ly came to the con­clu­sion: “Nah, I can do this myself for cheap” (spoil­er alert: I was wrong, at least about the lat­ter part) – and thus laid down the foun­da­tion for what would be an unex­pect­ed­ly tedious yet most­ly excit­ing path I was stum­bling along on. I’ve learned a lot about wood­work­ing, as well. Here are some insights about the thoughts behind the stands, as well as how I actu­al­ly built them.

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions and thoughts
The two speak­er stands are dif­fer­ent, but fol­low the same idea and mate­r­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions: A heavy black­ened steel frame, joined togeth­er by glass fibre enforced, sol­id epoxy-filled joints (ide­al would have been weld­ing). A cus­tom poured con­crete base sits in the bot­tom of the frame to add actu­al weight with­out adding visu­al weight. Adjustable damp­en­ing feet for bet­ter acoustic iso­la­tion are screwed right into the steel frame. The plat­form on which the speak­ers sit is made from sol­id 4 cm thick wal­nut. Black acrylic glass hides a nar­row space under the wal­nut, into which lights are installed to illu­mi­nate the mere­ly dec­o­ra­tive wood­en side pan­els of the two speak­er stands, which are also their main difference.

Archi­tec­tur­al side pan­els
The side panels/walls are inspired by Japan­ese lat­tice work and archi­tec­ture. For speak­er stand “Type EZ” the walls are built in a straight­for­ward and easy grid. “Type KK” is heav­i­ly inspired by Japan­ese archi­tect Ken­go Kuma’s Sun­ny Hills build­ing façade, a com­plex array of 3‑dimensionally con­nect­ed wood beams. This right here was the real chal­lenge and labor – from fig­ur­ing out how to do it to cut­ting hun­dreds of wood joints at sub-mil­lime­ter pre­ci­sion, with hand tools.

Detail photos, planning and construction